BOP

CEREUS

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.
~ Michelle McGrane

Tomorrow is a very long time away.
Above you Cassiopeia boasts of her arrogant beauty.
Below you the dust of some night-blooming
flower clings to your feet as you walk among pedestrians
and bicycles across the Pont des Iles toward Ville-Marie.
This is how you come to the end.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.

You may forever after lie awake
in the dark, hour after hour
as if you had died, and time
no longer matters, precise in its disbelief
that tomorrow will be better. Think of it
this way: pretend that you are walking
toward someone who waits for you
in fog, just across the bridge.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.

When you come to the other side, and the fog lifts,
you find a tavern that sells Maranges,
and an old woman sells flowers that smell of some
night-blooming thing you can almost recall;
for that moment, standing on the edge
of memory: something that might really have happened.

If you are lucky
you will carry one night with you.